exchemist
Valued Senior Member
It has only puzzled idiots for decades.
Is it possible for a human to Spontaneously Combust?
- Thread starter GaiaGirl95
- Start date
It has only puzzled idiots for decades.
Well, Frank Baker disagrees with you.
Especially after he realized that a little disagreement could get him on national TV!
Frank: so put me on TV!
TV executive: So you set yourself on fire. Big deal. Happens all the time.
Frank: No, it was spontaneous combustion! Really!
Executive: Says you and your drunk friend.
Frank: No, other people said so! My doctor saw the burns.
Executive: So he saw the burns after you set yourself on fire?
Frank: No, he said . . . uh . . . it was from the INSIDE. So I couldn't have just set myself on fire.
Executive: Now you're talking! Maybe we can squeeze you in.
You don't have any evidence he's lying. You may say shc has no evidence but anything's possible. We do not know everything there is to know about the human body, and we're still discovering new things about metabolism.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Cobalt6,
a.k.a. SFseaserpent,
a.k.a. LadyGaia,
a.k.a. Markga95,
a.k.a GaiaGirl95,
and doubtless sundry other pseudonyms, under which you have spammed numerous forums with this identical shit, and been banned for it, we're onto you. This is not a genuine point of view on your part. It is just a wind-up.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
I am not claiming that Frank Baker is not an idiot.
He may be a charlatan as well, of course.
Thats a typical response for when I offered you a point you couldn't refute. You got irritated because you know we do not know everything about the human body and you know it.
This is about the stupidest, most impractical epistemology there can be. By definition we will never know everything, therefore we have to choose what to believe and what not to believe and how much trust to put in each particular belief. Scientifically-minded people accept the principle of parsimony and put the the most trust in parsimonious generalizations of the behaviors of phenomena -- the predictive theories that assume the least while explaining the most. Thus they expect claimed phenomena to be verifiable from independent sources and here all we have is the 2013 story by Frank Baker of what happened to him in June 1995 and his story of what unnamed doctors said about his alleged injuries. His testimony was not even subject to cross-examination or issued under oath, thus it is not merely incredible but unbelievable. Why, if this account is true, did Frank Baker (and his friend, and his doctor) keep silent for 18 years? What tests were done? What was done to rule out clothing, gun oil, gun powder, and alcohol as the material on fire? What was done to rule out cigarettes and open flames as the source of ignition? Where are the records of the treatment? How was it possible for his friend to put out the fire if the ignition source was internal to Frank? How intoxicated was Frank at the time of the event? Without verifiable answers to these questions this is nothing more than a ghost story.
Anecdotal reports aren't evidence.
And no evidence he's telling the truth. We simply don't know.
True. You could be Frank Baker, just posting stuff to try to make yourself more famous. Anything's possible.
Also true. But if someone gives you a big diamond, and he says "I poop diamonds and for $10,000 I can teach you how to poop diamonds!" - he's not likely to be telling the truth. Even if it is theoretically possible.
Is everyone missing the real question?
How do you ignite an object made mostly of water? Sure, you can pour petrol all over a human being, but a human being cannot spontaneously combust. To do so, you would need a propellent inside a human being. There are no natural propellent's inside the human body which can spark and continue a flame inside of the body... or out.
How do you ignite an object made mostly of water? Sure, you can pour petrol all over a human being, but a human being cannot spontaneously combust. To do so, you would need a propellent inside a human being. There are no natural propellent's inside the human body which can spark and continue a flame inside of the body... or out.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Propellant? Surely that is to make something move, not burn?
You need something combustible, a supply of oxidant and (of most relevance to your point) an environment in which the two can react, without the reaction being quenched by the carrying away of liberated energy before it can accelerate.
The preponderance of water in living tissue redistributes heat so fast that no oxidation reaction can run away in the manner required for combustion to start. Which is why you can roast meat without it catching fire in the oven, of course.
But frankly, this whole thing is just too fucking obvious to debate.
A propellant is a chemical used in the production of energy and is used in moving rockets. I was using propellant as another word for fuel. It is in the wrong context. Propellant is still a fuel which burns which still asks the same questions, how can something biologically made mostly of water ignite?
Well worded and straight to the point and of course... you are right.
By evaporating the water with a heat source - like burning fat.
Yes but that can't 'just happen' in a human body. To evaporate the water, you need an extreme heat source. Fire barely burns through the skin quick enough. There would have to be an incredibly freak chemical tissue change in the human body for something like to happen.
You can make fires hotter by adding water. I saw how to do this in a survival book.
Do you remember the conditions in which you can make fire hotter using water?
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
I expect this will some variant of what happens if you foolishly try to put out an oil fire with water. The water turns semi-explosively into steam, and, while this abstracts some heat from the fire (latent heat of vaporisation), it also creates a huge expanding cloud of steam, which spreads the fire by causing a mist of burning droplets to billow up, exposing a far greater surface area to oxygen - and hence increasing the intensity of the burning.
For oil fires a foam is best as, if used calmly and correctly, this can be used to lay down a skin progressively over the oil surface, depriving it of oxygen. As a matter of fact, blood is - or at any rate was - often used in the foam, as this "cooks" and forms a good skin.
Ah yes, one of the first things you are taught in economics study.